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The following story on Texas singer Pat Green appeared
as the cover story for the October 2005 issue of Fort Worth Texas Magazine,
p. 46-51
story by DANIEL C. BARTEL
photo by JIMMY BRUCH
Pat Green doesn’t wear cowboy hats. They’re
not his thing.
On stage, he might don a baseball cap or let those waves of blond run
amok. But when it comes to Stetsons and big belt buckles, forget it.
It’s not really about the look anyway. It’s
about getting the Texas music sound into the hearts of fans outside
of Texas, those who might cheer the music but jeer the cowboy image,
he said.
“The day I go bald is the day I might consider wearing a hat,” Green
said.
And yet, this Texas native has again found a new
place to hang it. A year has passed since Green has settled into a
deluxe celebrity pad he’s
still in the process of renovating near Texas Christian University in
southwest Fort Worth.
For this San Antonio native, Fort Worth is another thumbtack on his
map of previous Texas dwellings, including Waco, Lubbock and Austin.
“All my friends call me a Texas transient,” he
said.
For now, Fort Worth suits him, he said. The city
is near Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, a good springboard
for hopping to and from national concert venues. Cowtown moves at an
easy pace, too – busy
without being bustling, cozy without being too sleepy, and – like
all residents will say – ideal for growing a family.
What’s more, Fort Worth’s youthful vibe
gets him back to the spirit of the dancehall days, playing to college
kids until the early morning, he said.
So, it’s safe to say he’ll be in Fort Worth – for
a while anyway.
“It’s the biggest small town in America,” he
said. “I
love the whole atmosphere.”
One would be hard pressed to find many roadside vendors in Fort Worth
shucking star maps to tourists. But that doesn’t mean that celebs
aren’t around. Some singers, a few actors but mostly professional
athletes have chosen Fort Worth as a home, mainly to keep a low profile.
And Fort Worth likes to keep things quiet. Very quiet.
“Some celebrities have second or third homes here,” said
Nancy Lohman, a Realtor with Williams Trew Real Estate Services in Fort
Worth. “It’s not unusual for a baseball player to play in
Minnesota but live here.”
Green kindly refrained from giving too many details about the exact
size and location of his new place, which is understandable given his
fame. One can only stand so many doorbell rings from enthusiastic neighbors
asking for sugar, barbecue sauce, autographs, back stage passes.
Knowing Green’s though, he’s most likely
been the one doing the door-to-door glad-handing, Lohman said.
Green can claim a numeric address in Fort Worth,
but work this summer has kept him from it. In May, Green embarked on
a three-month national tour, opening for country superstars Kenny Chesney
and Gretchen Wilson. It proved to be a test of Green’s endurance
traveling on the road, in the air, playing to arena-sized crowds and
racking up time away from the wife and kids.
“Sometimes I have to bring them along just so I remember what
they look like,” he said, jokingly.
Green is a bit of a rooster on stage: cocky, upbeat, always looking to
spark the crowd.
Now 33, Green retains his impish, fraternity boy good looks but has
eased into life as the working, family man. No more weekends with guitars,
bottles of Jack and road trips until dawn. The boy has grown up along
with his music. His latest album, Lucky Ones released in 2004 shows a
polished Pat Green, upbeat, rocking as usual but just a touch more subdued
than before, as if the classroom cut-up will at least agree to tuck his
shirttail in.
It certainly took love for family and future enough to pull him away
from the fast-paced, party atmosphere of Austin, where for seven years
he forged his name and sound.
The past year and a half has proved to be the era
where Green has gone public with his music, playing to unfamiliar crowds
at strange venues in places where critics continue to label him a “newcomer.”
All the same, Green said he’s happy being the
new guy.
“I love it. It’s like I have a new career again,” he
said.
The route to putting Texas music on the national map was a process that
began by cultivating a Texas audience, which he proved he could do by
playing to sellout crowds.
Taking the music to the next level required thinking
a bit less like an artist and more like a strategic marketer. Dallas-Fort
Worth gives Green the benefit of jetting around the country in “less time” than
takes to fly in and out of Austin or Houston, Green said. Less travel
time offers more time to play shows, he said.
As a home base, Dallas-Fort Worth has both symbolic
and practical applications, said Dr. Kevin Mooney, associate director
at the University of Texas at Austin’s Center 14for American
Music. Big business uses the Metroplex as a midway point for storing
and shipping products around the country. Green can use DFW similarly
as a launching point to create a national fan base, blazing a trail
for other Texas musicians to follow, Mooney said.
“No one wants to be identified as just another Austin band,” Mooney
said. “The dispersion of these musicians throughout the state reflects
their desire to go national.”
But what Green and others will have to master, Mooney said, is the delicate
balance of appealing to a wider audience without alienating the one already
established.
For much of his career, Green has been among the fiery preachers touting
the virtues of Texas music.
Green, along with music buddies Cory Morrow and Kevin Fowler, is a standard-bearer
to a new wave of progressive country that started in 1970s and infuses
blues rock, soul and song-story style. Progressive country has always
been a loose term, used more as a marketing label to hook audiences fed
up with conservative Nashville, Mooney said.
Whatever you call it, Green said his music is still
about living life and having fun. Critics have taken jabs at him for
writing too many songs about beer, tacos and road trips. Truthfully,
he said, how much different are they from songs by the elder country
music statesmen – Waylon
Jennings, Willie Nelson, and Merle Haggard – who sang about whiskey,
prison, trains and mama.
“I grew up listening to those guys. I owe it to them to make it
big,” Green said.
But Waylon, Willie and Merle were only the starting point. Green also
cites Robert Earl Keen and Jerry Jeff Walker as seminal influences in
his career.
Growing up in Waco, the eighth of nine children of
divorced parents, Green found himself wrapped into a big family when
his parents remarried. Green’s ears were constantly sipping a
musical cocktail made by stepbrothers and sisters that mixed Waylon
and Willie with splashes of The Beatles, The Doors, Louis Armstrong
and even Broadway show tunes.
Green’s father, Craven, a schoolteacher, had roles in local musical
theater. So it stands to reason that Green doesn’t claim one, single
musical influence or even two or three. He praises music in genres such
as reggae and hip-hop.
It wasn’t until his junior year at Texas Tech where Green began
experimenting on the guitar with fellow troubadour, Cory Morrow. In those
days, Green and Morrow didn’t have the money for studios or equipment,
so they practiced at the apartment of another college buddy. Then something
strange happened: people started showing up to listen.
“That was the genesis of it all,” Green said. “Things
started to really click, only David was getting tired of his apartment
getting trashed.”
From that point, Green was on to recording and playing
fraternity parties, barns and hole- in-the-wall bars, places he says
he’d gladly play
at even now.
Green’s gritty, rollicking style of performance has bumped heads
with the likes of his spit-and-polish Nashville contemporaries.
He bypassed the whole Nashville scene after signing
with the New York-based Universal-Republic in 2001. Up to that point,
he’d sold around
200,000 self-produced records without any major label support. This included
Green’s live recording from the Live at Billy Bob’s series
in 1999, which sold more than 70,000 copies, one of the highest of any
artist in the series.
Three albums since the Universal signing has led to hundreds of thousand
of albums sold, multiple Grammy nominations and sold out shows at venues
such as the old Houston Astrodome.
And yet Green is still not a household name. It doesn’t matter
where the music is so much as where it’s going, he said.
“The worst thing I can think of is becoming stagnant.
I want our music to go as far as it can,” he said.
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